We Are Not Winning the War on Terror Because We Are Not Fighting the War on Terror
By Matt Rowe, Executive Director, WinTheGWOT.org
Originally published in the May 2, 2007 editon fo the Indianapolis Star
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It is disconcerting that major US political leaders, policy makers, and presidential hopefuls still believe that the war in Iraq as we are fighting it today somehow contributes to the effort in the overall global war on terror. The current refrain goes something like, “If we don’t fight them over there, then we will fight them over here.” We are already fighting them here and have been for decades.
The real question is what kind of attacks are we likely to face and where? As 911 showed us, a well motivated group of terrorists can achieve a tremendous victory without any local popular support, but the fighters in Iraq cannot simply pull up stakes and create the kind of havoc in the US that they have in Iraq. They’ll have to do something different—something like they did in September 2001.
Although the networks which those terrorists relied upon are certainly disrupted to some degree by US military action around the globe, they still exist and the motivation and expertise they need is still available. So are the targets. Americans must not be fooled into thinking that because we have not had another 911 style attack we are winning the global war on terror. On the contrary, our enemies are meticulously plotting their next move against us. As we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, our failure to implement an effective post Iraq invasion strategy on top of short sited cold war political strategies has clearly increased the number of motivated enemies we have.
An attack like 911 takes years of planning and coordination, so unless the enemy was already planning its subsequent move prior to September 2001 we should not have expected to see another devastating attack yet. They were likely waiting to see our response to 911 and what we leave unprotected for use as their next target.
Read more...
Originally published in the May 2, 2007 editon fo the Indianapolis Star
_______________________________________________________
It is disconcerting that major US political leaders, policy makers, and presidential hopefuls still believe that the war in Iraq as we are fighting it today somehow contributes to the effort in the overall global war on terror. The current refrain goes something like, “If we don’t fight them over there, then we will fight them over here.” We are already fighting them here and have been for decades.
The real question is what kind of attacks are we likely to face and where? As 911 showed us, a well motivated group of terrorists can achieve a tremendous victory without any local popular support, but the fighters in Iraq cannot simply pull up stakes and create the kind of havoc in the US that they have in Iraq. They’ll have to do something different—something like they did in September 2001.
Although the networks which those terrorists relied upon are certainly disrupted to some degree by US military action around the globe, they still exist and the motivation and expertise they need is still available. So are the targets. Americans must not be fooled into thinking that because we have not had another 911 style attack we are winning the global war on terror. On the contrary, our enemies are meticulously plotting their next move against us. As we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, our failure to implement an effective post Iraq invasion strategy on top of short sited cold war political strategies has clearly increased the number of motivated enemies we have.
An attack like 911 takes years of planning and coordination, so unless the enemy was already planning its subsequent move prior to September 2001 we should not have expected to see another devastating attack yet. They were likely waiting to see our response to 911 and what we leave unprotected for use as their next target.
Read more...
